empowering oregon k12 greg lund-chaix ken lett schools through drupal · 2013-05-28 · first, some...

Empowering Oregon K12 Schools through Drupal &

other FOSS Tools

Lance AlbertsonRudy Grigar

Ken LettGreg Lund-Chaix

About Us

● OSU Open Source Lab○ Server hosting for FOSS projects○ Education & Outreach

● Lance Albertson - Director● Rudy Grigar - Senior Systems Engineer● Ken Lett - Senior Software Engineer● Greg Lund-Chaix - past-ORVSD Program

Manager

Empowering Oregon K12 Schools through Drupal & other FOSS ToolsLance Albertson @ramereth | Rudy Grigar @basic_

Greg Lund-Chaix @gchaix

First, some history ...

2005 study ranks Oregon

46th in the nation in

technology adoption in

the classroom



OMG! Fix it!

Oregon Legislature passes ORS § 329.840 creating the Oregon Virtual School District with $2M seed funding.



Um ... now what?

http://xkcd.com/911/



Geeks!



What it's notNeither a school nor a district.

No teachers, no credit, no classrooms (or playgrounds!).Not an unfunded mandate.

http://is.gd/KyoF3M



What it is

● A funded un-mandate● Content

○ Tools○ Training○ Support

● 5 school years● ~750 web sites● 2.5TB of content● ~180,000 user accounts http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/540105576/



Secret Sauce ... (not really)Know the audience!

● Administrators○ FREE!

● Teachers○ Instant gratification!

● District IT staff○ No extra work for you!

● Open source? What's that? Kittens. Every presentation needs kittens.

http://xkcd.com/262/



How?



Infrastructure Details● Private Virtualization (IaaS)

○ Powered by Ganeti+KVM○ ~50-60 VMs / 8 physical nodes

● Backend○ Storage - GlusterFS (3 nodes)○ MySQL (Percona) (3 nodes)

● Operating Systems○ CentOS 6 / Gentoo Hardened (legacy)

● Configuration Management○ CFengine (legacy) / Chef



Infrastructure Evolution

● Started small and simple○ A few physical nodes

● Eventually added:○ Virtualization, NFS, iSCSI (appliance), Reverse

Caching (varnish)

● Segmented by larger districts or schools○ Worked well in the beginning ...

● Became more heterogeneous as time progressed



New ORVSD Platform



ORVSD Infra 2.0

Virtual Machines: Load Balancers & Web NodesPhysical Machines: DB Nodes & FS Nodes

Integration "glue"

● ORVSD Central● REST APIs● Drupal as a user management framework● Deploying new sites through ORVSD

Central via the Jenkins API● Statistics gathering using modules for

Drupal and Moodle to report back to the Legislators



What works (Pedagogically)

● Go straight to the teachers and give them something they can use in the classroom tomorrow.

● Teach the teachers who teach the other teachers.

● No waiting for provisioning or approval.

● Success is viral.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexnormand/5992512756/



What works (Technically)

● Open source tools enable scaling at low cost

● Cloud-like resources FTW (VMs, Storage, etc)

● Configuration management● Homogenous infrastructure● Jenkins code pushes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexnormand/5992512756/



What hasn't (Pedagogically)

● Giving tech to teachers without involving district IT staff = FUDsplosion!

● The "Not invented here" syndrome.

● The "Ooh, I have a shiny hammer!" syndrome.

● Sharing, open content.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fergusonphotography/6898291987



What hasn't (Technically)

● Keeping all the sites/modules patched and updated

● Heterogeneous environment (too many one-offs)

● Storage appliances suck, DO NOT USE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fergusonphotography/6898291987



Questions?Lance Albertson - [email protected] - @ramereth

Rudy Grigar - [email protected] - @basic_Ken Lett - [email protected] - @KenLett

Greg Lund-Chaix - [email protected] - @gchaix

http://osuosl.orgFollow OSUOSL

@osuosl | fb.com/OSUOSLG+ "Open Source Lab"

This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Copyright 2013

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

empowering oregon k12 greg lund-chaix ken lett schools through drupal · 2013-05-28 · first, some...

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